Hope Archives - Music for Mass

Setting Mayday to music

I’ve talked before about the differences between hoping, waiting and trusting, in the context of an Alleluia verse, but a fine example of this is Psalm 39/40, coming up on 20th Sunday OTC. It’s a fascinating psalm because the tone of it depends completely on which stanzas are selected to be sung. On most of the occasions when it is chosen, the emphasis is on God’s law and how we should keep it, creating as we do so an expectation that God will therefore take care of us in all ways. You would assume that this is the only burden of this particular psalm.

Two strands, one psalm

The other part of the psalm (and it’s not linear : the two strands interweave, so that it’s easy to miss one if you’re concentrating on the other, like one of those pictures that you can see as either one thing or another) is about the parlous state that the psalmist is in, and how he needs God to help now, quite urgently actually. He has helped in the past; the psalmist has been in dire straits before and God has rescued him; but actually now would be a good time, God, are you listening?

Lady = Church scaring off dragon=Satan — Picturesque and colourful peril

Calling for help a recurring theme

It’s a very human piece of writing. Appealing for help in difficulties is one of the main secondary strands of the Book of Psalms (the main one is praise), and it is so artfully done that we tend not to notice quite how artfully. The crisis in this psalm seems to be current, but of course, just as in an adventure novel or a thriller, if the protagonist is writing/singing about it afterwards (especially in the first person), we know that he must have escaped and won through to safety. How does the psalmist create this sense of current urgency, of real danger unresolved?

Three different psalms, same message

It’s interesting to compare this psalm with Psalms 68/69 (which we had on 15th Sunday OTC, just a few weeks back) and 69/70, because it’s almost as though those two psalms are each an amplification of half of this one. There are echoes of whole sentences between them. All three psalms start with a bang in medias res. Ps 39/40 is less immediate, if anything, because it uses a past tense (so we know the psalmist has survived) : I waited, I waited for the Lord. Ps 69/70 describes the same situation but in the present tense : O God, make haste to my rescue, Lord, come to my aid! Ps 68/69 has the unforgettable Save me, O God, for the waters have risen to my neck.

drowning people underwater — the perils of the deep, even worse upside down

Psalm 39/40 continues in its comforting past tense : he stooped down to me, he heard my cry. Then it describes the awful situation the singer was in : he drew me from the deadly pit, from the miry clay, and it is exactly the same as in Ps 68/69 : I have sunk into the mud of the deep and there is no foothold. [..] Rescue me from sinking in the mud.

Stuck in the mud

This peril, of being fast stuck in a hole and unable to get out, is a recurring fear for the psalmist. He describes it minutely, and he is asking not for an unspecific with-one-bound-he-was-free rescue but (more specific, more limited, you might almost say more concrete) for something to stand on, because that is his biggest fear, that he might simply sink down into the mud and never resurface : I have sunk into the mud of the deep and there is no foothold (Ps 68/69). God provides the solution : he set my feet upon a rock and made my footsteps firm (Ps 39/40) , with the same pattern in the tenses : Ps 68/69 has the current danger, Ps 39/40 recollects it in tranquillity and still has a cold shiver.

Other possible dangers

There are various types of danger which the psalmist asks to be rescued from: enemies (Pss 16, 21, 26, 34, 58, 139, and many others), sorrow and general distress (Pss 6, 12, 87, 101, 118), illness ( e.g. Ps 114). Quite often he turns the situation around and talks about how the Lord has (already) rescued him from whatever the problem was (a trap or snare set by his enemies, general tribulation, illness, or even God’s absence), and some psalms talk about the watery danger or the falling into a bottomless pit as danger past and therefore less scary (e.g. Ps 123/124). Psalm 53/54 shows the usual trajectory of these psalms : a request for help, here is the problem, God will save/has saved me, hooray for God. The urgency of the plea is mitigated by the way that the psalm progresses through the danger to a comfortable resolution. This is often the way that the Responsorial Psalm is constructed in the assortment of verses prescribed for a given Sunday, but it’s often effected by leaving out whole chunks of the text, so it’s worth checking, if you want to understand the movement of the psalm as a whole.

He makes my footsteps firm

Often the psalmist uses the metaphor of a firm footing to show his confidence in God’s power and mercy. Like everyone except the richest and most powerful in those days, he moves about on foot, and his safety is in his speed and not tripping up, like the hero in The Time Traveler’s Wife , or the beasts of the foot in The Once and Future King when Wart experiences life as a hawk. So he rejoices My feet have never slipped (Ps 17/18), My foot stands on level ground (Ps 25/26) , When I think I have lost my foothold, your mercy, Lord, holds me up (Ps 93/94) and so on.

The power of tenses, the tension of the present

Why does the danger seem so urgent in the psalms I was discussing earlier? It’s not just the tenses, though the present tense lends undeniable emphasis in that he is in the deadly pit at this moment, not just worrying about it as one of the things which might happen. Psalm 39/40 starts with that reassuring past tense (I waited..he drew me), but then moves even into a future tense (you will not withhold your love from me) before returning to a continuous present (I am beset with evils) and then into the imperative, most ‘current’ of all the tenses (come to my rescue) and then ends with another imperative and a superb cliffhanger (O God, do not delay) of a last line. I said it was artful. Psalm 43/44 moves in the same way, seemingly peaceful to begin, but ending with with an acute yell for help (Stand up and come to our help! Redeem us because of your love!), where the editorial exclamation marks indicate the power of the words. Psalm 68/69 starts acute, goes through the imperative and then settles into confident predictions of the future. 69/70 is much shorter, so it doesn’t have room for this sort of trajectory, and it’s more like 39/40: it starts with a cry for help, looks forward more generally, but then instantly returns to the current danger, ending again O Lord, do not delay. Short stanzas and short lines add to the effect here.

Singing only part of the psalm

It’s just as well that we usually have only a part of any given psalm prescribed for a particular Sunday, as it’s difficult to cover changes of mood in one tune or setting. Psalm 87/88 is unusual in having only one mood throughout, that of despair, which presents its own problems, and I’ve written about that before, but in these calling-for-help psalms, the mood changes, so you have to be careful about not making the tune too closely related to one feeling. I like to emphasize the calling, though, so I try to make that bit of the tune the sort of noise you might use to call someone (a sort of yoo-hoo effect), but you can’t be too desperate. Like the settings for Psalm 22/23, you need to have room for the dark valley, but it mustn’t dominate.

Setting a shout to music

When you’re calling someone, you have to catch their attention, so there’s usually a higher note there; you need to be clear, so you can’t rush that bit; and where it’s open-ended (my earlier cliffhangers), I try to reflect that, avoiding a terminal-sounding cadence. These are the points I am thinking about while I’m setting these particular psalms. They are important, because although the main business of the Psalms is praise, calling for help is something we all need to do on a regular basis, and I love the direct and undeferential way in which these psalms show us how to do it. It reminds me of the way that Jesus talks to God. Abraham (as a contrasting example) tends to be more formal and elaborate (think about the scene we had as a first reading recently where he whittles God’s requirement for not destroying the wicked city down to only ten men), but you don’t talk like that when the waters have risen to your neck. You shout for help; and God answers. And then you praise him.

Just hold the baby, while I down a devil : Mary in a more active role

Subtleties of translation

Just as translating something gives you a rare chance to get inside the text and really understand it, writing a tune for a line of text makes you chew it over far more carefully than a quick reading does. This is even truer of the Alleluia verses than the psalms, because they are mostly so short. The functional problems tend to be getting the balance right, especially as you aren’t allowed to repeat anything (except the word ‘Alleluia’, obviously). But precisely because they are so short, you have to focus on the exact rhythm of the words, and the meaning, and the way the two interconnect.

Sometimes the different country versions are clearly dealing with the same idea, sometimes they decide to stress different aspects of it. The words for the Alleluia verse this week were on the one hand simple, even monosyllabic, but on the other hand so different in the choices which had been made, that I was intrigued.

Hope, trust, wait ; one verse, four versions

The only easy way to compare is to set them all out on the page, so bear with me. I’ll leave out the Alleluias.

CAN : I wait for the Lord; I hope in his word.

OZ : I hope in the Lord, I trust in his word.

UK : My soul is waiting for the Lord, I count on his word.

US : I wait for the Lord; my soul waits for his word.

The original Psalm verse

The origin for all these Alleluia verses is Psalm 129/130, v 5, so let’s have a look at some translations of that. Grail version : My soul is waiting for the Lord, I count on his word. Revised Grail : I long for you, O Lord, my soul longs for his word (awkward shift from second to third person there, but that’s the newest translation, so presumably the most accurate). King James : I look for the Lord, my soul doth wait for him : in his word is my trust. Jerusalem : I wait for God, my soul waits for him, I rely on his promise. Scottish metrical psalms, for the purposes of comparison : I wait for God, my soul doth wait, my hope is in his word.

Back to the (differing) Alleluia verses

So full marks to the British for keeping as close as possible to the original psalm version, and let’s talk about that one first, after a pause while I clear away all the books I have just looked everything up in. The two first striking things are that it is ‘my soul’ rather than ‘I’, and that the verb is an ongoing present tense. ‘My soul’ for ‘I’ is a fairly common Latin circumlocution (we’ve recently had it put back into the prayer just before Communion in the new translation…’and my soul shall be healed’, where it is definitely meant to mean the same as ‘I’, which was the previous version), so that’s easy, though I must say I like the directness of the ‘I’ that everyone else has gone for. But that present continuous is interesting, because you get a sense almost of patient impatience, as if we are saying to God, ‘Here I am, look at me actively waiting, your move now’, where the simple ‘I wait’, though it technically means the same, is more a description of a state.

Commas and semi-colons

And look at the punctuation. The UK and OZ versions describe two simultaneous aspects : I hope, and at the same time I trust; I am waiting, and at the same time I count on the Lord’s word. I accept ‘count on’ as equivalent to ‘trust’, but because what divides the two phrases is a simple comma, they are in balance, not causally related (I am feeling terrible nerdy here, I hope someone else is as interested in this as I am!).

In the US and CAN versions, we have a semi-colon which indicates a different relationship between the clauses. The CAN one seems to me to be causal : I wait for the Lord [because] I hope in his word; whereas the US one is much more limited, even repetitive, but intensified : I wait for the Lord; yes, my deepest self is waiting for what he has to say. That connects neatly with God’s instruction last week at the Transfiguration to listen.

Waiting leads to hoping leads to trusting?

What first set me thinking about this was the way that the OZ and CAN verses almost sound like two stages of one process. First (CAN) I wait, [because] I hope; then (OZ) I hope, [while] I am trusting. You can do the same thing with US and UK : first (US) I wait for the Lord, [yes really] my soul waits for his word; then (UK) my soul is waiting for the Lord [while] I am counting on his word. But where in the process do we start? Are these sequential? Do we wait because we believe, or because we hope? Do we hope because we believe, and so we wait? Is trusting the same as hoping or believing?

Waiting, hoping and trusting : similar but not quite the same, and one day I’m clearly going to have to learn Hebrew and probably Ancient Greek as well (Latin I can manage). Failing an examination of the original words, I went off to have a look at Spe salvi, as being the most recent official teaching about hope. And I was lucky, because it was illuminating. ‘Faith is Hope’ is the title of the second section. ‘The one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life’ (SS2). Aquinas is quoted as saying that this faith is how eternal life takes root in us (SS7), but where I really struck gold was in section 9, where it explains that the word St Paul uses for this is hypomone, normally translated as patience, perseverance, constancy (so there is my ‘wait’) and goes on to say, ‘this word was used expressly for the expectation of God […] on the basis of the certainty of the Covenant’ (and there is my ‘trust in his word’), summarising this as’a lived hope, a life based on the certainty of hope’ (SS9).

The perfection of hope and trust

So it isn’t sequential, more relational and even dynamic, like God himself (I knew the Greek would be helpful). The waiting we are talking about here is active, like Advent, like pregnancy, as I’ve mentioned before. And then in the last section of Spe salvi, there is a meditation on Our Lady as the symbol of hope, not just Stella maris but also the star of hope. There we can see someone hoping, believing, waiting and trusting all in one, like any mother only on a cosmic scale.

Actually writing the tunes

The emphasis throughout then is on patient trust-filled waiting, so when I was writing the tunes I concentrated on not resolving the wait, but allowing a sort of conscious patience to support the meaning. All the settings came out differently, which I felt was appropriate in the circumstances. Luckily I had forgotten (or I would have been totally intimidated) that Bach set this, as part of one of the cantatas, and you can hear how he keeps the waiting hanging over several bars. My other favourite example of musical ‘waiting on the Lord’ (a recurrent psalm theme) is Mendelssohn Ps 39/40, but there the waiting is resolved in rescue, so the feel is different. The waiting is in the past tense. Do hope and trust figure? Sometimes the words just say ‘he answered my cry’ or ‘he heard my complaint’, but the translation I sang with my sister ends with the words ‘he inclined unto me, who put my hope and trust in him’. Not a faithful translation, but full of the same hope and trust as this week’s Alleluia verse.

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Tag: Hope

Making a song out of shouting for help : Psalm 39/40